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Wednesday, 2 March 2016

Portfolio Value and Net Worth - February 2016

Each month I will be publishing the following regular progress updates toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence:
1. Portfolio Value and Net Worth as it stood at the end of the previous month
2. Income, Expenses and Savings achieved for the previous month
3. My Investing Choice for the previous month's savings

This post covers point 1 above: Portfolio Value and Net Worth.

Portfolio Value - end Feb 2016

My portfolio includes the savings and investments in my Freedom Kitty as well as my Personal Pension, the combination of which make up my "FI Before 50 Roadmap".

FREEDOM KITTY
Here is the end of month value of my Freedom Kitty:

This includes my regular £150 contribution to the ISA for February, but does not include any additional money I've managed to save during February - that will be invested in March and so will show up on the March Portfolio post.

As you can see, the current value of my ISA is less than the total amount I have invested so far (by £67). I think that the reason for this is due to the current state of the markets, though I also think that the fees involved with investing through St. James Place are playing a part. I'm a complete newbie to investing and so last year when opting to start saving into a Stocks and Shares ISA I chose St. James Place because I have no idea how to invest (and they already manage my pension). I am planning on reviewing my options for the 2016/2017 ISA year.

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £23,000 for this year:

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking against the overall target of £209,590:

So I'm just under 5% of the way to achieving my Freedom Kitty target for 2016, and 0.5% of the way to achieving the overall target! Still a long way to go, but it feels great to have made a start, and even better to be tracking my progress on here.

PERSONAL PENSION
Here is the end of month value of my Personal Pension:

At the moment the monthly pension contribution from my business account is £3,000. I have been out of a work contract since the beginning of February 2016 so there is a chance that the monthly pension contributions will be reduced from April if I do not take another contract until later in the year. This will really depend on my work circumstances. For now I'm making great progress with my goal to save £2,000 per month this year.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £110,000 for this year:

So I've got just over 82% of the way still to go to hit my pension target for this year.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking against the overall target of £364,965:

At 23% of overall target I'm edging toward being a quarter of the way to my Personal Pension ultimate goal, that feels pretty fantastic. The money in my pension pot has been accumulating over time (to varying degrees) since I was about 25 which means it's had 15 years to reach its current value. Despite nearly being at a quarter milestone I need to continue to push for a high savings rate if I'm to achieve my goal of reaching Financial Independence in 10 years time.

Net Worth - end Feb 2016

I've included the outstanding balances on my credit cards in this calculation. I choose to use credit cards for my every day spending because I earn cashback on them and there is no annual fee (American Express and Barclaycard). I have direct debits set-up to pay these amounts in full each month, and once a year I get a nice little payback from them. I also have a Halifax Credit Card but this is only used when I travel abroad as it offers a decent exchange rate and no fees.

I've found it a really interesting exercise working out my Net Worth, it's something I've never done before so it's nice to know the current total. I've purposely not included any assets such as car, valuables or house sundries, it's really only the big or purely savings items I wanted to include. I'm happy with a current net worth of £225,225 and it will be interesting to see how this figure changes in what promises to be a year of change for me - selling my current house and buying a new one with TheBF.

Well, it feels like this has been quite a long post! I'm hoping that it's been interesting for you to read - I've certainly found it useful compiling it and I'm looking forward to seeing how the figures change each month.

Do you think this post has just about the right level of detail in it, or too much/too little? Is there any information I've not included concerning portfolio values which you'd like to see? Do you track your net worth? As always I'd love to hear from you and appreciate your comments...

2 comments:

Neither too detailed or not enough. You have some nice goals. Congrats on your low credit card debt. So many folks get buried in debt and spend many years climbing out of that hole before being able to start saving much of anything.

Thanks for your comments I really appreciate it. I'm very fortunate with regards to credit card debt. Years ago (when I was in my early twenties) I did run up credit card debt to the tune of about £3,000 with only being able to repay a fraction of the debt each month. Luckily I saw the light and stopped all spending on my cards, and then followed a regime of transferring the debt to cards which offered interest free periods while paying off as much as I could of the outstanding balance each month. Eventually I paid the debt off and then didn't have credit cards for many years - spending only what was actually available to me in my current account. Once I reached a point where I felt I could trust myself I took credit cards out again - but this time I chose cash back ones and set-up direct debits to pay them off in full every month.

You're quite right, credit card debt is a problem many people are faced with and it's such a shame. I really feel that there should be better education in school about the perils of debt, particularly credit card debt. It would also have been so beneficial to have been taught about the power of investing and compound interest! I certainly wasn't taught anything of that when I was in school.

It's been a while since I last posted one of my regular updates on how my goals or quest for Financial Independence is going. There ar...

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